At All Costs

by David Weber

  He looked at the President, one eyebrow raised, and she nodded in glum agreement with his analysis.

  "I'm not in any sort of position to comment on the first point," he said then. "That's your bailiwick-yours and Admiral Theisman's. On the constitutional implications, Denis would probably be a much better authority than me. My gut reaction is that the Constitution probably gives us the scope we need to carry out an investigation and, if it turns out the bastard did it, to bring the hammer of God down on him with a vengeance. However, that brings us to the political aspects. Specifically, I'm worried as hell that we haven't had the Constitution back up and running long enough to weather this kind of crisis."

  He met the President's eyes, his strong-featured face as grim as she recalled ever having seen it.

  "I've played fast and loose around the margins more than once, Eloise. You know that. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's one of the reasons you wanted me for this job. But I really do believe in the Constitution. I believe the only cure, the only preventative, for the sorts of outright insanity the Republic's been prey to is a powerful consensus on the absolute sanctity of the rule of law. If we pursue this, then it's more than possible, in my estimation, that we could wind up pulling the pillars of the temple down on our own heads.

  "If we're going to accuse Arnold Giancola of what I'm almost certain he did, we've got to have proof. Not suspicions, however profound. Not hypotheses, however convincing. Proof. Without that, he and his partisans-and he has a lot of them, as we all know-are going to scream we're simply pulling a StateSec. We're concocting ludicrous charges against a political adversary as a pretext for purging your opposition. Anyone who actually knows you would realize how preposterous that was, but by the time the spin masters on both sides get done with it, no one outside your immediate circle is going to be sure of that. Which means we might just find Giancola and his supporters seeking to topple your administration on the basis that they're the ones protecting the Constitution from abuse and manipulation. And if he can generate enough confusion, drum up enough support, the consequences for everything we've been trying to accomplish could be very, very ugly."

  "It's probably even worse than you're thinking," Pritchart said unhappily. "This war's incredibly popular at the moment. I hadn't realized how much public opinion wants to get our own back against the Manties for the way they kicked our ass in the last round. And at the moment, there's absolutely no question in Congress that the Manties manipulated the diplomatic exchanges. Why should there be? I personally certified that there wasn't!

  "So what happens if I suddenly go before Congress and announce that we're the guilty parties after all? Suppose I tell the Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee we went back to war-with Congress's enthusiastic support-on the basis of a lie told not by the Manties, but by our own Secretary of State?"

  "I have absolutely no idea," Usher admitted frankly. Abrioux shook her head, as well. Unlike Usher, however, her expression was that of someone who was entirely certain she was involved with something way, way above her pay grade.

  "The first thing that's going to happen," Pritchart told him with absolute certainty, "is that they're going to refuse to believe it. Even with the sort of proof you've already pointed out we need, it would take time-probably quite a bit of it-to convince a majority of Congress of what really happened. And that assumes a majority of Congress is willing to be open-minded enough to even entertain the possibility. Don't forget how many friends Arnold has over there.

  "But even if Congress buys our version of it, we're winning the damned war. At least, that's the way it looks right now, and Congress as a whole is absolutely convinced we are. So even if it turns out the shooting started because one of our own cabinet officers deliberately manipulated, falsified, and forged diplomatic notes, there's going to be a sizable number of senators and representatives who don't care. What they're going to see is that this time it's the Manties on the ropes, and there's no way in hell they're going to be willing for us to drop an e-mail to Elizabeth Winton saying 'Oops. Sorry about the misunderstanding. Let's all make nice now.' Especially not if that means-as it damned well ought to, if Arnold's done what you-we-think he has-that the Republic publicly acknowledges its war guilt. And if we make what we believe happened public knowledge, we've got to acknowledge our guilt if we're ever going to convince the rest of the galaxy we're not still the People's Republic of Haven."

  Her beautiful face was drawn, her topaz eyes shadowed, and Usher nodded slowly.

  "I knew it was going to be a shit bucket, whatever happened," he said. "I didn't follow through to realize just how bad it really would be, though."

  "It's not your job to worry about the political consequences. It's mine. And if you can come up with concrete proof-proof I can take in front of a judge, proof I could lay in front of an interstellar arbitration panel, or use to convince even our Congress-then I've got no option but to make that proof public and try to survive whatever the political, diplomatic, and constitutional consequences may be. If you give me that proof, then I will by God do it, too."

  "Eloise-"

  "No, Kevin. This isn't something we can avoid, or dance around. We can't afford to open it up in public at all without proof. But if that proof exists, we can't afford not to open it up. Sooner or later, if it really happened, and if there's proof it did, then it's going to become public knowledge whatever we do. And I won't-I can't-let the Constitution prove to be something built on foundations of sand. If we're ever going to put the old power games behind us once and for all, then you're right, it has to be done on the basis of the rule of law. And that means we have to follow the law wherever it leads us, whether we want to go there or not."

  "All right, Madam President," Usher said with unusual formality, his eyes dark with mingled concern and respect. "That's your call. Whatever you decide, however you decide to handle it, you know I'll back your decision."

  "Yes, I do," she said softly, topaz eyes softening.

  "But that brings us to the final consideration. And, frankly, to the reason I did an end run around Denis for this meeting. You say we need proof. I don't know for a fact we're going to be able to find it, even if I'm a hundred percent correct in my suspicions. But before I can find it, if it exists at all, we need to decide how I'm going to go about looking for it. Under a strict interpretation of the law, I need to inform the Attorney General of my suspicions. He, in turn, needs to inform you, and you need to inform the Foreign Affairs Committees of both houses, at the very least, because of their oversight role. And there are probably at least a couple of other committees which also ought to be brought on-line. Plus, an official investigation ought to be opened by the Attorney General, through the FIA, under a finding of probable cause from a magistrate. Unfortunately, all of that requires bringing dozens, almost certainly hundreds, of other people into the investigation.

  "If we do that, it's going to leak. At the very least, word of it will get to Giancola from one of his friends. More probably, it'll hit the info boards within a matter of hours. In which case-"

  He shrugged, and Pritchart bit her lip and nodded.

  "The worst of all worlds," she acknowledged. "Especially if Arnold decides his best defense is to mount a strong offense before the investigation really gets rolling."

  "And particularly if he decides not to restrict himself to due process when he does," Usher pointed out.

  "Absolutely."

  She drummed nervously on her desktop with her fingertips, then shook herself.

  "I notice you said all of that was what would follow from a strict interpretation of the law. I'm almost afraid to ask this. No, I am afraid to ask it." She grimaced. "Unfortunately, I don't have much of an option. So, tell me, Kevin. Just how un-strict do you suggest we be?"

  "Believe it or not, Eloise, I wish to hell we could do this one one hundred percent by The Book. If we don't, and if the wheels come off, it's going to be at least as bad as anything you've just described. In fact, it's probably going to
be worse.

  "Even so," he continued implacably, "I don't see any way we can. You're going to have to decide who else you can trust to bring in on this. I think you're going to have to tell Theisman, and God knows how he's going to react. And even though I'm the one who deliberately cut him out of the loop for this meeting, I really want to bring Denis in on it. Not only does he have both a right and a constitutional responsibility to know what we're doing, but if he doesn't know, we're a lot more likely to have someone step on his own reproductive equipment if I'm running some sort of clandestine op he doesn't know about. Especially if he finds out I'm up to something without knowing what that 'something' is.

  "But after you've decided who else needs to know, everything else has to be blacker than black until we either have the proof in hand or know with absolute certainty where that proof is and how to get our hands on it. I don't like it, it's dangerous, but it's the least dangerous option I see under the circumstances."

  "I wish you were wrong. Dear God, how I wish you were wrong."

  Pritchart closed her eyes for a moment, rubbing her forehead, then exhaled noisily.

  "Unfortunately, you aren't," she said. "All right. I hereby authorize you to pursue your black investigation. But be very, very careful, Kevin. This one could destroy everything you and I-and Tom Theisman and Javier-have fought for for decades. I'll have to think long and hard about who else to tell, and how, but at least if someone has to be finding our way through the minefield, I'm glad it's you."

  "Gee, thanks." Usher made a face, and the President chuckled. There wasn't much humor in the sound, but perhaps it was at least a beginning.

  "How are you going to start?" she asked.

  "With Danny here." Usher nodded at the senior inspector. "She's already on board, and she's already black. I'll just keep her that way. However," he looked Pritchart straight in the eyes, "before she makes a single additional move, I want a presidential pardon, signed and in her hand, for any laws she happens to break doing what we're asking her to do."

  "You always were loyal to your people in the Resistance," Pritchart said with a smile, and looked at Abrioux. "As a matter of fact, Inspector Abrioux, so was I." She looked back at Kevin. "The senior inspector will have her letter of pardon within the hour," she promised.

  "Good. And as far as where we begin, Danny is going to have to put together her own team, one we can cut completely out of normal Agency operations. I think she's already got the people she wants in mind, and I'm pretty sure I can do a little creative paperwork on their assignments to make them available to her. And once that's out of the way, we'll probably start by putting the entire life of the late Yves Grosclaude under an electron microscope. If he really was Giancola's accomplice, and the fact that he's dead would seem to suggest very strongly that he was, then he may have been careless and left us something. For that matter, he may have had an insurance file stashed away somewhere. We're not going to get any legal search warrants without proving probable cause, which we've just agreed we can't do without going public, but if Danny and her people can figure out where what we need is, I can probably finagle some semi-plausible way to get possession of it in a way which won't irreparably taint it in an evidentiary sense."

  Pritchart's nostrils flared, and he shrugged again.

  "I'm going to have to do some dancing in the shadows to make this one work, Eloise. You know I am."

  "Then I probably need a pardon for you, too," she said.

  "No, you specifically don't need a pardon for me," he disagreed. "I'm the cutout. The rogue, working without any authorization from you because of my personal antipathy for Secretary Giancola."

  "Kevin-" she began in automatic protest, but he shook his head.

  "You've got to have deniability on this one," he said flatly. "If news of what we're doing leaks and we haven't found the proof we need, you're going to need someone to throw off the sleigh. If you don't have it, the consequences are going to be worse than our having gone public from the get-go would have been. And I'm the only logical candidate."

  She looked at him, seeing her fellow revolutionary, her longtime friend and sometime lover, and she wanted desperately to disagree with him. She wanted it as badly as she'd ever wanted anything in her life. But-

  "You're right," President Eloise Pritchart said. She hesitated only a heartbeat longer, then nodded sharply.

  "Do it," she said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  "Well, Chief," Captain Scotty Tremain said, "what do you think?"

  "Me, Sir?" Chief Warrant Officer Sir Horace Harkness shook his head. "I think the rest of the Navy got itself reamed a new one while we were off at Marsh. And I think they expect us to do something about it now."

  "Chief, that is so cynical of you." Captain Tremain shook his head with a lopsided smile.

  "No, Sir. Not cynical, just experienced. Look at it. Everywhere we've been with the Old Lady, we've kicked ass and taken names. And the minute those assholes working for High Ridge send us off to the back of beyond, what happens? And who do they always send in to do the dirtiest jobs after it all hits the fan? The Old Lady. And us, of course," Harkness added with becoming modesty.

  Tremain's smile grew wider, but he really couldn't argue with Harkness' analysis. And everything he'd seen so far, especially in the classified situation reports and ONI analyses to which his rank allowed him access, suggested things were even worse than the warrant officer knew.

  "I'm sure Duchess Harrington is vastly relieved to know you're along, Chief," he said. "In the meantime, we've got an entire squadron of carriers waiting for us to whip their LAC groups into shape. Now, Her Grace hasn't seen fit to tell me exactly what we're going to be doing, but from the force mix I've seen and a few things Admiral Truman's let drop, it's not going to be picketing the approaches to the home system. So I was thinking it's time you and I spent a few productive afternoons thinking up particularly evil training scenarios for those poor souls entrusted to our care."

  "Actually, Sir," Harkness said with a grin of his own, "I've already been giving some thought to that. You want to get Lieutenant Chernitskaya in on this?"

  "Of course I do. She's our tac officer, after all. And it distresses me to see such innocence and lack of guile in an officer of her seniority and native talent. It's time we began initiating her into the true deviousness of our profession."

  "Officers really have a way with words, don't they, Sir?"

  "We try, Chief. We try."

  * * *

  "So you're fairly satisfied with the Cutworm target list, Ma'am?"

  "As satisfied as I can be, Andrea," Honor agreed, sitting back from the table and wiping her lips on a napkin. The scattered remains of lunch lay on the table between her, Jaruwalski, Brigham, Alice Truman, and Samuel Mikl¢s, and she looked up with a smile as James MacGuiness refilled her cocoa mug and handed Nimitz a fresh stick of celery.

  "I don't like spreading our forces this thinly," she continued more seriously, looking back at her subordinates as MacGuiness silently withdrew from the dining cabin of Imperator's enormous admiral's quarters. "But we've got to get this op moving. We've been sitting here for over three weeks since we finally activated the command, and we still don't have our entire assigned order of battle. Part of me wants to go right on waiting until we do, so we'd have the strength to hit better defended targets, but we can't. And given the pressure to move, it's probably as good a distribution as we could hope to come up with."

  "That's true enough, Honor," Truman agreed, "although I don't think I'm any crazier than you are over the notion of splitting up into such small penny packets. On the other hand, we ought to catch them fairly unprepared."

  "I know." Honor sipped cocoa, letting her mind run back over the framework of the operation which had been assigned the randomly generated codename of "Cutworm." It was a silly name, but no sillier than "Operation Buttercup" had been. And unlike some navies-including, apparently, the Havenite fleet, upon occasion-the Royal Manticoran Navy
had a pretty good track record for selecting operational designators which didn't give clues as to what those operations were intended to do.

  "To be honest," she said finally, lowering her mug, "I think part of what I'm suffering from is opening-night jitters. But all of us need to remember that Thomas Theisman and Lester Tourville, at least, have frighteningly steep learning curves. The fact that we're almost certain to get away with it the first time around is really, really going to... irritate them. Which means they're going to devote some serious effort to figuring out what to do about us before we come calling the next time."